One of the most enduring and incisive of the pro-life arguments has been the argument from viability.
Pro-abortion advocates have historically argued that abortion should be completely unregulated at least up to "viability," or when a baby can survive outside the womb.
But pro-lifers have regularly countered that, due to ever-improving science and medical care, "viability" is a moving window that is always moving backwards and covering younger and younger preborn babies.
Here's a great example:
For expectant parents Shakina Rajendram and Kevin Nadarajah, the doctor's words were both definitive and devastating: Their twins were not "viable."
"Even in that moment, as I was hearing those words come out of the doctor's mouth, I could still feel the babies very much alive within me. And so for me, I just wasn't able to comprehend how babies who felt very much alive within me could not be viable," Rajendram recalled.
Just a word of advice for doctors: When you tell a mother that her children are unlikely to survive, she's going to tend to do, you know, everything in her earthly power to prove you wrong.
And it was thus. Rajendram was bleeding; the birth of her children was imminent. They were out of time. So they did not waste any time at all:
As crushing as the doctor's news was, Nadarajah said, they both refused to believe their babies would not make it. And so they scoured the Internet, finding information that both alarmed and encouraged them. The babies were at just 21 weeks and five days gestation; to have a chance, they would need to stay in the womb a day and a half longer, and Rajendram would have to go to a specialized hospital that could treat "micropreemies."
A day and a half. Just 36 hours. That's all they had.
And they pulled it over:
Rajendram and Nadarajah requested a transfer to Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, one of a limited number of medical centers in North America that provides resuscitation and active care at 22 weeks gestation.
Then, they say, they "prayed hard," with Rajendram determined to keep the babies inside her just a few hours longer.
Just one hour after midnight on March 4, 2022, at 22 weeks gestation, Adiah Laelynn Nadarajah was born weighing under 12 ounces. Her brother, Adrial Luka Nadarajah, joined her 23 minutes later, weighing not quite 15 ounces.
"Under 12 ounces...not quite 15 ounces." As CNN notes, the little tykes "weighed little more than a can of soda," with "their organs visible through translucent skin." Meanwhile, "the needle used to give them nutrition was less than 2 millimeters in diameter, about the size of a thin knitting needle."
Terrifying for any parent. And yet mom and dad were obviously, immediately in love:
"They were perfect in every sense to us," Rajendram said.
The road ahead for the twins was potentially brutal. Survival was dubious and sure to be difficult. And yet the parents were given hope in the midst of the trauma:
"We could see through their skin. We could see their hearts beating."
That was enough. The parents admitted that there were "painful setbacks over nearly half a year of treatment in the hospital, especially in the first few weeks," including some in which they considered withdrawing care from their two precious babies.
Yet at these difficult junctures they "rallied in prayer" after which they "saw a turnaround."
And now, the future for these onetime-"micropreemies" looks bright indeed:
The twins are now meeting many of the milestones of babies for their "corrected age," where they would be if they were born at full-term. ...
"The one thing that really surprised me, when both of them were ready to go home, both of them went home without oxygen, no feeding tube, nothing, they just went home. They were feeding on their own and maintaining their oxygen," Shah said.
